"At the library I would go the shelves alphabetically. I was drawn to anyone with a female name, with a Latino or Spanish name. There were very, very few. But as a teenager I discovered African American poetry. Gwendolyn Brooks was the first. Then Phillis Wheatley. I really identified with this slave woman writing poetry to assert and affirm her humanity. Suddenly my eyes were open to history. There was a whole explosion of African-American women poets-Audre Lorde, Nikki Giovanni, June Jordan. I have a poem in my head that's going to take me years to write down. Its working title is "On Thanking Black Muses." I owe them, because poetry really changed my life, saved it."
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Essayists from the United StatesLGBT rights activists20th-century poets from the United StatesWomen activists from the United StatesActivists from New York City
Original Language: English
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Lorna Dee Cervantes Interview in Fooling with Words: A Celebration of Poets and Their Craft by Bill Moyers (1999)
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/June_Jordan
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June Jordan
June Millicent Jordan (9 July 1936 – 14 June 2002) was an African-American bisexual political activist, writer, poet, essayist, and teacher, born in Harlem, New York, to Jamaican immigrants.
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